Box Office - 'Brüno' Wins, But Not By Much

It's fair to say that Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno will not approach the kind of business its predecessor did, even though his new film outgrossed Borat by a few million dollars on its opening weekend. Brüno lost significant chunks of its audience on Saturday and Sunday, and the Friday numbers were already a little lower than expected. All told, Brüno barely made $30 million, which was at least 20% less than most projections.

With Harry Potter opening on Wednesday, this kind of performance really limits Brüno's future, even though the demographics are substantially different for the two movies. Cohen's latest comedy made $14 million on Friday, dropped to $9 million on Saturday, and dropped again to $7 million on Sunday. With those figures, it will be hard for this movie to sustain itself for longer than three weeks, tops. It still won the weekend box office, but not as comfortably as you would have thought. Ice Age trailed by only a couple million dollars in the estimates. Last week, you'll remember, the film tied Transformers until the final receipts were tabulated on Monday. It probably won't change this time around to the tune of $1.9 million, but it could. Transformers took in another $24 million to finish in third place.

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Fearless Forecast - 'Brüno' Spanks the Competition

Audiences have been responding to raunchy comedies quite a bit in the past few years. I suppose Judd Apatow really broke down that wall again, and with last year's Role Models and this summer with The Hangover, R-rated is where it's at. Welcome back, Sacha Baron Cohen.

Universal reportedly paid Cohen something like $40 million to distribute Brüno, which arrives in theaters this weekend and could reimburse the studio dollar-for-dollar in three or four days. The Borat crowd has been waiting for this, and they were a pretty big crowd three years ago. I guess the same rules apply to this that would apply to a sequel, because the structure's the same and the star's the same. And that $35 - $40 million should be plenty to win this weekend's box office. It would take near repeat performances from last week's top two films to match that amount, and those totals were quite a bit lower than the three-day projections for each movie. So barring some weird event where a well-reviewed comedy that already has a built-in audience fails to deliver, Brüno wins the weekend almost by default.

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Box Office - 'Ice Age' and 'Transformers' Tie

Something's gotta give in this back and forth box office race, but we'll have to wait until Monday afternoon to know for sure. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen both made $42.5 million, according to the latest estimates, and both, you would have to say, underperformed to get there.

I don't remember the last tie at the top of the box office, and it's very unlikely that this will stay that way when all the tickets are counted, but $42 million for either one of these movies has to be considered something of a disappointment, even though it was a holiday weekend. Over the course of the five days, Ice Age has earned $67.5 million, which some analysts thought would be the three-day total. Transformers, even if it gets the edge when the final results are tallied, probably won't have the legs to take a third weekend against the likes of Bruno. It's true that the holiday weekend took some of the starch out of its performance, losing 61% of its opening weekend audience, but even if it slips to 35% of this weekend's results (or roughly half of a $50 million weekend), Bruno would only have to gross $28 million to win, and Borat made over $26 million in its November 2006 debut.

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Box Office - 'Ice Age' and 'Transformers' Close Again

You wouldn't have thought it would be such an interesting battle, but the head-to- head between Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is one of the closest box office races of the year.

On Wednesday and Thursday, the films went back and forth, each claiming the top spot for a day, and Transformers narrowly won Friday, according to estimates from Box Office Mojo. Still, Ice Age has outpaced the giant robots over the course of the first three days of its run, with almost $42 million to just over $40 million. Transformers ought to be the bigger film on Saturday, which should be enough to put it over the top for the three-day and the five-day counts.

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Box Office - 'Transformers' Back on Top Thursday

I still expect Transformers to ramp up its business over the Fourth of July weekend and fight back a fairly strong challenge from Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. On Wednesday, the animated threequel topped Transformers on its opening day, but Revenge of the Fallen trailed by only a couple million bucks on its seventh day.

The trend reversed on Thursday, and this is exactly why I don't see Ice Age taking the weekend. It was a close call - $11.5 million for fighting robots to $11.1 million for animated extinct species - but the Saturday Fourth of July hurts a family movie much more. Families are more inclined to take a few extra days off around the weekend than they are if the Fourth is on a Wednesday, which only affords them a couple days off. Transformers would have consistent business in either scenario, but Ice Age has been counting on the first two days because the business will be a little lower on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday than it would be on a non-holiday three-day weekend.

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